The Plots Thicken: Untold Stories From Hollywood Cemetery

Hollywood Cemetery

Hollywood Cemetery is more than a burial spot. It’s also a park, a garden and an outdoor art museum.

It’s “a special landscape,” says tour guide Kathryn Whittington, adding that the cemetery’s encompassing background also extends to the people buried there.

While most visitors to Hollywood learn of its presidents, generals, soldiers and titans of industry, there are also people of the arts, willful women, a few scoundrels, and visionaries who influenced the way Richmonders live today. Their stories are not often told, but they are fascinating additions to a remarkable place.

THE ARCHITECT OF ‘MORE’

How the cemetery came to be is itself the story of a little-known but notable person: John Notman, neither a Richmonder nor buried in Hollywood. Notman, who was born in Scotland and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1831, was the architect and landscape designer hired by Richmonders William Haxall and Joshua Fry to develop a plan for the city’s expanding need for burial sites.

At the time, most cemeteries were either family plots or churchyards, laid out on a grid. But the late 1800s were the beginning of the rural cemetery movement. Inspired by the landscaped grounds of Mount Auburn in Boston, Notman walked the grounds of the former Harvie estate, topographic maps in hand, and in 1848, came up with the plan that would become today’s Richmond jewel. It is marked by curvilinear paths; views of gardens, trees and the James River; and natural features punctuated by reminders of eternity. “He was creating this earthly paradise,” says Whittington, who provides tours of the cemetery through the Valentine Museum. “He is the reason it [Hollywood] is here.” Notman would go on to design the grounds of Capitol Square, extending further his influence on Richmond.

ENGINEER WITH A VISION

Like Notman, Wilfred Emory Cutshaw took a job and made more of it. Hired as Richmond’s city engineer in 1873, his first big project was to build a new reservoir. He gave the city its reservoir, plus more. Landscaping and the displacement of earth for the project became Byrd Park. Likewise, Cutshaw’s work on a pump house by the Kanawha Canal was put to a dual purpose, with a second floor that became a social center. Always on the lookout for ways to bring green into the city, Cutshaw developed such prominent parks as Chimborazo, Libby Hill and Jefferson Hill. He also built a nursery that would provide trees for streets, parks and cemeteries. His modest monument at Hollywood hides the story of an engineer with vision.

WOMEN OF WILL

Richmond looks like it does today not only because of these men, but also from the efforts of women who saw the value of preservation. Foremost among these is Hollywood “resident” Mary Wingfield Scott. An architectural historian, pioneer preservationist and suffragette, Scott is responsible for saving Linden Row, the Adam Craig House and the Greek Revival Barret House from destruction. Founder of the APVA (now Preservation Virginia), she wrote two books, Houses of Old Richmond and Richmond Neighborhoods.

Women were also key in preserving land. Many of today’s Hollywood visitors might recognize the monument of Lewis Ginter because of the botanical garden named after him, but it was his niece Grace Arents, buried across from him, whose will led to the garden’s creation. Arents was a benefactor in many areas. Trained as a nurse, she cared for orphans through a mission church in Oregon Hill, established public baths and playgrounds, and founded the school that is today’s Open High.

ARTS AND LETTERS

While the presidents and generals wrote their legacies in large and sometimes bloody actions, there are many more at Hollywood who left behind writings of a more traditional sort. Pulitzer Prize winner (for the novel, In This Our Life) Ellen Glasgow, a suffragette and student of the Enlightenment, leads the pack.

“She believed in a realistic interpretation of the South and its treatment of women … the opposite of a genteel romantic,” Whittington says. Yet, there was a tender spot in her for animals. She was the driving force behind Richmond’s first shelter, and her estate and royalties were left to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Another author buried at Hollywood, who Whittington claims as a favorite, is the Rev. John Bannister Tabb. The poet, teacher, pianist and Catholic convert-turned-priest was once better known than Emily Dickinson. In an eventful life, he published eight books of poetry and one of English grammar. His epitaph is one of his poems, “In Aeternum”: If life and death be things that seem/If death be sleep and life a dream/May not the everlasting sleep/The dream of life eternal keep.

FAMOUS BY ACCIDENT

While stories of the Civil War dominate in Hollywood, an unusual one stands out, unlike her grave which is marked only by a tiny Irish flag. This is the burial spot of 18-year-old Mary Ryan, an employee at the Confederate laboratory on Brown’s Island. Her error in packing ammunition created an explosion that killed 45 people, 43 of them women and children, and led to Confederate setbacks that contributed to the war’s end.

Whittington, who has also worked as a mansion docent at Maymont and in 1988 created the Historic Richmond walking tour, comments that all tours of Hollywood Cemetery “either teach you Virginia history or reinforce the history you learned in school.” And since most of “history” is “story,” you’ll find plenty in the plots of Hollywood.

More Tales to Tell

Kathryn Whittington, who leads tours of Hollywood Cemetery for the Valentine Museum, was excited to be able to tell the stories she often must skip during regular tours. “How many do you want?” she asked.

“Oh, about four or five,” I replied.

“That’s all? I have at least a half dozen off the top of my head!”

She told them anyway. Here are some tidbits of other Hollywood stories. Consider them trailers in the movie ad for the cemetery.

VARINA HOWELL DAVIS: Her husband may have been president of the Confederate States of America, but this First Lady was against secession and repeatedly broke the law by writing to her family in the North. Her daughter Winnie is celebrated as a daughter of the confederacy, but not this independent thinker.

SILAS OMOHUNDRO lies in an unmarked grave at Hollywood, but as the proprietor of the second largest slave jail in Richmond (reportedly under the Exxon station on East Broad Street), he is no less a part of Confederate history than all those generals.

JAMES THOMAS, a wealthy tobacco merchant, is remembered as the man who saved the bell at First Baptist Church. When church members considered melting down the piece for the war effort, he came up with gold to cover their contribution and save the bell.

TOKUKICHIRO ABE is an unusual name to find in the cemetery for good reason: He was Japanese. Sent from Tokyo to consult with American tobacconists, he died and was buried here. Whittington says a package of Japanese cigarettes was once found at the gravesite.